In the Crucible of Chronic Lyme Disease ― Collected Writings & Associated Materials

Following completion of his medical training and a one-year stint as attending physician on Howard Champion's Surgical Critical Care Service and MedStar Unit at Washington Hospital Center in the District of Columbia, Kenneth Liegner, M.D. returned to Westchester County, home of his Alma Mater, New York Medical College, to start a private practice. Unwittingly, he had 'plunked himself down' in the heart of a burgeoning epidemic of Lyme disease. His patients confronted him with puzzling syndromes that defied 'tidy' formulations of the illness and thrust him in to a Maelstrom of medical controversy.

Lyme disease, a new poorly understood disease, emerged hand in hand with the rise 'managed care'. Physicians caring for persons with Lyme disease, loyal to the Hippocratic Oath and serving what they saw as patients' best medical interests, found themselves on a collision course with a new Corporate Medical Ethic dedicated to maximizing profit.

One practitioner's work over 25 years is presented here along with correspondence with many principals in the field. Documentational in nature and not written as a narrative, the materials, nonetheless, convey the intensity of the struggle to characterize the nature of Lyme disease and the desperate fight for proper diagnosis and treatment upon the outcome of which patients' very lives depended. The volume includes protocols useful as reference materials for patients and practitioners alike, as well as photographic images of many persons important in the history of Lyme disease.

Foreword by Pam Weintraub, Senior Editor of aeon digital magazine and author of award-winning book Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic.

Preface by Paul W. Ewald, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Louisville and author of Plague Time.

Dr. Kenneth Liegner is a Board Certified Internist with additional training in Pathology and Critical Care Medicine, practicing in Pawling, New York. He is on the medical staffs of Northern Westchester Hospital Center in Mount Kisco, NY and The Sharon Hospital, Sharon, CT. He has been actively involved in diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease and related disorders since 1988. He has published articles on Lyme disease in peer-reviewed scientific journals and has presented poster abstracts and talks at national and international conferences on Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases. He has cared for many persons seriously ill with chronic and neurologic Lyme disease. His work has focused on the serious morbidity and (occasional) mortality that can eventuate from this aspect of the illness. He has emphasized the urgent need for widespread clinical availability of improved methods of diagnostic testing and for development of improved methods of treatment for Lyme disease in all its stages. He holds the first United States patent proposing application of acaricide to deer for area-wide control of deer-tick populations as a means of reducing the incidence of Lyme disease. Dr. Liegner is a currently a member of the Board of Directors of The International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (I.L.A.D.S. www.ILADS.org) and is a member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (www.aapsonline.org).